There’s another issue too, which is that it is extraordinarily complicated to assess what the ultimate outcome of particular behavior is. I think this opens up a statistical question of what kinds of behaviors are “significant”, in the sense that if you are choosing between A and B, is it possible to distinguish A and B or are they approximately the same.
In some cases they won’t be, but I think that in very many they would.
That’s why I believe a person is responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions. If the chain of effects is so convoluted that a particular result cannot be foreseen than it should not be used to access the reasonableness of a person’s actions. Which is why I think general principles should guide large areas of our actions, such as refraining from coercion and fraud, even for a consequentialist.
I am sympathetic to this, but would at least want to modify it to responsibility for reasonably foreseeable consequences. What is foreseeable is endogenous—it is a function of our actions and our choices to seek information. We generally don’t want to absolve people of responsibility for actions which were not foreseeable only because they were reckless as to the consequences of their actions, and didn’t bother to gather sufficient information to make a proper decision.
There’s another issue too, which is that it is extraordinarily complicated to assess what the ultimate outcome of particular behavior is. I think this opens up a statistical question of what kinds of behaviors are “significant”, in the sense that if you are choosing between A and B, is it possible to distinguish A and B or are they approximately the same.
In some cases they won’t be, but I think that in very many they would.
That’s why I believe a person is responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions. If the chain of effects is so convoluted that a particular result cannot be foreseen than it should not be used to access the reasonableness of a person’s actions. Which is why I think general principles should guide large areas of our actions, such as refraining from coercion and fraud, even for a consequentialist.
I am sympathetic to this, but would at least want to modify it to responsibility for reasonably foreseeable consequences. What is foreseeable is endogenous—it is a function of our actions and our choices to seek information. We generally don’t want to absolve people of responsibility for actions which were not foreseeable only because they were reckless as to the consequences of their actions, and didn’t bother to gather sufficient information to make a proper decision.